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Chapter Two
Whats a Girl to Do?
Allegorical Transsexuals
When Englands first female monarch, Mary Tudor,
ascended the throne, an anxious Parliament met in order to
legally clarify her gender. The problem was curious. Since
William the Conqueror, England had been ruled by Kings, by
virtue of their anatomy and of their portrayal in both the
body politique and body naturale, male. The late Edwards
counselors worried about Marys ability, as a woman, to
command the respect of her subjects and of her enemies, those
who might not
think that her Highness could nor should have
enjoy and use such like royal authority power
pre-eminence prerogative and jurisdiction, nor
priviledge of the same, nor correct and punish
offenders against her most royal person and the
regality and dignity of the crown of this realmand the dominions thereof, as the kings of this
realm her most noble progenitors have
heretofore done enjoyed used and exercised.1
In 1554, by the Act Concerning Regal Power -- an act
declaring that the regal power of this realm is in the
Queens Majesty as fully and absolutely as ever it was in any
of her most noble progenitors Kings of this realm2
-- Marys
first parliament invested the office of Queen with the powers
of King.
But the House of Lords forsaw another problem, that of
uxorial obedience. As a woman, Englands sovereign, was
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commanded to be under obedience, forbidden to usurp
authority over man by holy writ,3
for the husband is the
head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his
body.4
When she married, which an anointed head of state
must do in order to produce a legitimate heir, Queen Mary,
and so the monarchy, would by Scriptural edict be in the
hands of her sovereign husband. Especially concerned about
the likelihood of a marriage to Philip of Spain and the
possible religious consequences, to preclude the eventuality
of a Papist coup, Parliament in effect decreed that the queen
was of two bodies, a male body politiqueand a female body
naturale.5
With this Parliamentary dispensation freeing her
from her biological gender, Mary was optimistically given the
right to rule as a man.
Shortly after Elizabeths coronation, the gender problem
again confronted Parliament. The Supremacy Act of 1533
ordained King Henry VIII head of the English church.
Because Catholic Queen Mary had refused to accept such a
heretic distinction, the exigency, moot, had not been
addressed specifically in the Act of 1554. But as a woman
by birthe and nature, argued Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of
York, Elizabeth could not be the head of a marriage, the
church, or anything else. While he acknowledged that she
was, by the appointment of God, our sovaraigne lord and
ladie, our kinge and quene, our emperor and empress, the
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head of the church, as representative of Christ, was by
nature male. For that reason, in the Supremacy Act of 1559,
Elizabeth was named governess and not head of the English
church. Marie Axton suggests that by 1561, it was again
necessary to endow the queen with two bodies:
a body naturaland a body politic. . . . The
body politic was supposed to be contained
within the natural body of the Queen. . . .
The Queens natural body was subject to
infancy, infirmity, error and old age; her body
politic, created out of a combination of faith,
ingenuity and practical expediency, was held to
be unerring and immortal.6
Not indifferent to the prevailing winds, the virgin
Queen managed to equivocate about her gender and to maintain
the deference of her male subjects for forty-five years.
Carole Levine observes that Elizabeth both fostered and
exploited the notion of her two bodies, for
If a kingly body politic could be incorporated
into a natural female body -- her natural self
-- how much more natural right Elizabeth had to
rule, and to rule alone.7
Levin cites numerous instances in which Elizabeth refers to
herself as prince or king, or to her behaviour as
kingly. Most notable for this study is the queens speech
at Tilbury, in which she claimed,
I know I have the body of a weak and feeble
woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a
king, and of a king of England, too, and thinkfoul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince
of Europe should dare invade the borders of my
realm; to which, rather than any Dishonour
shall grow by me, I myself will take up Arms, I
myself will be your General.8
(my emphasis)
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The problem milia Lanyer confronts when writing Salve Deus
Rex Judorumis most evident in this stirring heart and
stomach of a king speech. It may be described as one of
allegoric transsexualism. Both of Englands female queens,
accepting what Tabeaux and Lay have called the entrenched
theological and social prejudice against women, perform in
their positions of power as men rather than as women. Mary
unhesitatingly accepts the House of Lords proclamation, so
acknowledging the validity ofpotestas patria. Several
outspoken critics of female rule published virulent treatises
maligning Mary Tudor. Thomas Becon and John Knox are the
most notable. In 1554 Becon chastised God:
Thou has set to rule over us a woman, whom
Nature hath formed to be in subjection unto
man, and whom thou by thine holy apostle
commandest to keep silence and not to speak in
the congregation. Ah, Lord! To take away the
empire from a man, and to give it to a woman,
seemeth to be an evident token of thine angertoward Englishmen.
9
A few years later, Knox sounded the First Blast of the
Trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, arguing
that where women reigne or be in authoritie,
that there must nedes vanitie be preferred to
vertue, ambition and pride to temperancie and
modestie, and finallie, that auarice the mother
of all mischefe must nedes deuour equitie and
Aristotles iustice.10
But unlike her successor, Mary rules with scant self-
reference to her gender.
Perhaps because Elizabeth was more astute than her half-
sister, or perhaps because in the aftermath of her Marys
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rule, gender was more of an issue, the Virgin Queen
frequently draws attention to her sex and her ability to
allegorically alter it. When necessary, she becomes a
mutant, a female aspect with a male essence, accepting in
effect Aristotles claim in The History of Animalsthat the
female is a defective male, whose full development was
crippled in the womb11
and his belief that women possess
virtue only as those who are subject, in contrast to men, who
possess it as a figures of authority.12
Her proviso, I have
the body of a weak and feeble womanfurther implies that
Elizabeth accepts also Thomas Aquinass explanation of
Aristotles assessment and the patriarchys approval of it:
Cuius ratio est quia propter molliciem. Nature
ratio eius infirmiter inheret consiliatis, sed
cito ab eis removet propter passiones
aliquas.13
The reason for this is the softness. By nature
her reason inheres weakly, but it leaves her
immediately when she is passionate.
Because Elizabeth, as a woman, cannot function outside the
hierarchy in which she holds a position inferior to that of
man, the queen becomes the mannish woman Philip Stubbs
describes in his Anatomy of Abuses,one of the
hermaphroditi, that is monsters of both kindes, halfe women,
halfe men.14
These attitudes of queens to their substancesreflects
conventional wisdom of the day, namely, that women in their
very natures were inferior, incapable of strength, of
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courage, of wisdom. Women, by law and by custom, were not
only physically different from men, but they were
characteristicallydifferent from men. Born subject and
silent, they were genetically predisposed to appreciate,
rather than to be, heroes. The notable exceptions in
contemporary British history, Queens Mary and Elizabeth,
redefined by the House of Lords and and their discourse
communities in their capacities to be heroes, weremonsters,
political transsexuals on the throne. As women, their
performances in office said, they could not be valorous.
Christianized by church fathers, Aristotles view of
womankind governed Tudor/Jacobean thought. If women
possessed virtue only in their silence and subjection, how
then could Lanyer, a woman, write an epic -- a history of
heroic virtue, about women?
Lanyer did not equivocate about her gender, nor did she
rhetorically attempt to alter it. From line four of her
opus, wherein she acknowledges the extraordinary nature of
her business, until its last lines, in which she immortalizes
the heroic virtues of women in the female body of Margaret
Russell Clifford, Lanyer remains a woman writing with the
heart and stomach of a woman about the hearts and stomachs
of all women. In the intervening three thousand lines, she
has defined the virtue of women, not merely as derivations
of manly goodness or male valor, not as a function of
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allegorical transsexualism, but by celebrating the excellence
and courage inherentin the female gender. She disregards
two thousand years of male doctrine, offering her female
readers an image of woman, whole and entire, not defectively
male, but a refined product of Adams rib.
With the introduction of a mirrour metaphor in her
first dedication, Lanyer asks the queen consort and, by
extension, the community of women, to Looke in this Mirrour
of a worthy Mind, wherein she catalogues some, but not all,
of womankinds faire Virtues.15
Referring four times in the
opening of her work to this truthful reflection, her little
Booke, a glasse of dim steele,16
Lanyer asks womankind to
consider an array of feminine virtues that Anna, as
representative of her sex, embodies: the Naturall, the
Morall, and Divine.17
Bright Bellonas entry into The
Authors Dream, majestic in a fiery chariot, infuses
womankind not only with wisdome but all the warlike
attributes associated with male heroes as well. The gathered
women emulate the war-goddess, says Lanyer, as all humours
unto hers did frame.18
Lanyers education, her association with the feminine
court coterie, and allusions in her work indicating that she
was familiar with the works of Sir Philip Sidney, suggest
that she probably had read The Defense of Poesy, published
in 1595.19
According to Sidney, providing models of heroic
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excellence is the poets task, for it is only through poetry
that the learned . . . them that are already taught, may be
instructed in the ways of moral perfection without offense or
tedium. Wrapped in allegory of the past, the poet may
present tales filled with honest exemplars to beguile the
reader into the extraction of moral education. That moral
education, claims Sidney, is the poets aim. The poet, he
explains,
pretending no more, doth intend the winning of
the mind from wickedness to virtue: even as
the child is often brought to take mostwholesome things by hiding them in such other
as have a pleasant taste: which, if one should
begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or
rhubarbarum they should receive, would sooner
take their physic at their ears then at their
mouth. So is it in men (most of which are
childish in the best things, till they be
cradled in their graves): glad they will be to
hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus,
Aeneas; and, hearing them, must needs hear the
right description of wisdom, valure, and
justice; which, if they had been barely, that
is to say philosophically, set out, they would
swear they be brought to school again.20
In the Defense, Sidney, examining the heroes of classic
composition, determines how the poet defines heroic virtue
through example:
If the poet do his part aright, he will shew
you in Tantalus, Atreus, and such like...in
Cyrus, Aeneas, Ulysses, each thing to be
followed . . . .21
It is, indeed, the poets duty to provide beautiful
illustrations of the heroical, men above reproach, whose
greatness of soul not only inspires, but precludes criticism.
There rests the heroical, whose very name
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. . . should daunt all backbiters; for by what
conceit can a tongue be directed to speak evil
of that which draweth with him no less
champions then Achilles, Cyrus, Aeneas, Turnus,
Tydeus, Rinaldo? Who doth not only teach and
move to a truth, but teacheth and moveth to the
most high and excellent truth; who maketh
magnanimity and justice shine through all mistyfearfulness and foggy desires; who, if the
saying of Plato and Tully be true, that who
could see Virtue would be wonderfully ravished
with the love of her beauty -- this man setteth
her out to make her more lovely in her holiday
apparal to the eye of any that will deign not
to disdain until they understand.22
Lanyers dilemma, and the dilemma of all virtuous Ladies in
general, is that male poets have not provided exemplars of
female heroism. The classic tales instruct men in the ways
of magnanimity, but they instruct women in the ways of
pettiness, praising and dispraising them only in terms of
physical beauty, submission, and chastity. It mattered to
Virgil that Helens beauty sank a thousand ships. It
mattered to Shakespeare and to Heywood that Lucrece
maintained her honor by committing suicide.23
It mattered to
Shakespeare that Cleopatras beauty and ill-placed lust for
power destroyed two great men. But neither the bravery nor
wit of women so mentioned in the classics is hidden in ill-
chosen, male-defined feminine holiday apparal. Those
ancient tales of male heroism used to teach not only moral
lessons, but also the more mundane necessities of
aristocratic life, such as Latin and Greek and composition,
constituted a repetitive barrage of misogyny. Educated
Renaissance women, exposed since childhood to the treachery
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and abnegation of literatures female characters, would have
been hard-pressed to resist assimilation of self-loathing or
to develop accurate and resilient self images. They are
taught that power belongs to men, that female assumption of
it is evil, dangerous, and unbecoming. Further, they are
taught through female representations in the classics that
total self-denial is proper feminine demeanor. Women are
held, and hold themselves, to behavioral standards set by
long-suffering Griselda and dead Lucrece. Heroic virtue,
historically, does not belong to them. It is quite
interesting, nonetheless, that Sidney personifies Virtue as
feminine, a beauty to ravishmen, so structuring the very
relationship with Virtue as a male relationship characterized
by enchantment and violence. Lanyers dilemma, the dilemma
of all virtuous Ladies in general, is then, the dilemma of
absent role-models.
One of Lanyers tasks, as self-consciously female poet
consciously writing the history of female heroism, is to
exhume the body of womankind, to bathe it in a feminine
version of the truth, to attire it in nobility, and so to
teach and move women to a truth -- the most high and
excellent truth -- about the magnanimity and justice of
their sex.24
She follows Sidneys instructions carefully,
dressing Eve, the first woman, in all her richest ornaments
of Honour,25
so that she may entertaine her readers to
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to allies, how to enemies, how to his own,
lastly, how in his inward self, and how in his
outward government, and . . . in a mind most
prejudiced with prejudicating humor, he will be
found in excellency fruitful . . . ,29
so Lanyer uses the actions of her catalogue of women in
sundry moments of difficulty: Eve in the garden; Art and
Nature arguing at the spring; valiant women of Scripture who
conquer male oppressors; pious women who participate in
Christs suffering, death, and subsequent victory over sin;
Margaret Russell Clifford in her lawsuit; Mary Sidney in her
authorship. In her dedication To the Ladie Katherine
Countess of Suffolk, Lanyer clearly states the purpose of
the characters she has chosen, advising her dedicatee to let
her daughters read about those Ladies which do represent /
All beauty, wisedome, zeale, and love, and so to feede
upon the heavenly food of Christ, the reward of all
Christian heroes.30
The virtues in which Lanyer clothes Queen Anna, the
Naturall, the Morall, and Divine, and the catalogue of
virtues Lanyer attributes to Christ in her dedication to
Katherine Knevet Rich -- zeale, grace, love, pietie,
constancie, faith, faire obedience, valour,
patience, and sobrietie, chaste behavior, meekeness,
continence, justice,mercie, bountie, and charitie -
- are the qualities of the epic hero, the heroic virtues
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attributed by Sidney and his literary contemporaries to the
heroes of traditional epics.31
Lanyer asks Lady Rich and her female readership, Who
can compare with [Christs] divinitie?32
as, throughout her
work, she skillfully equates women, by attributing those same
merits to her dedicatees and those women they represent, with
the sanctioned hero of her epic, Christ. Thus, Lanyer
expands the contemporary understanding of female virtue
beyond its Renaissance meanings of obedient, chaste and
silent, creating through juxtaposition of image and
metaphor, a larger, more comprehending model of womans
character. Lynette McGrath, calling Lanyers work a
performance of hieratic rites of female incantation,
correctly notes that the feminist intent of Salve Deus Rex
Judorumunfolds behind a screen of appropriately feminine
use of Christian praise.33
Within the forty-two lines Lanyer
writes beforeshe announces her sacred Christian topic to
Queen Anna, she introduces fifteen pagan dieties and refers
to the apotheosized late Queen Elisabeth, all of whom she
employs to extol the virtues of her intended patron. In
fact, Lanyer apportions only three stanzas -- eighteen lines
-- to Christ, the appropriate subject of her poem. She
devotes the remainder of her opening statement -- a total of
one hundred and forty-four lines out of one hundred and
sixty-two lines -- to the announcement of the true subject of
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her work, heroic virtue in the community of women. Using
Christ, the Paschal lamb prepared by Lanyer and served by her
feasts hostess, Eve, as a vehicle for the sanctification and
glorification of womankind, Lanyer elevates her gender --
That we with him tEternitie might rise:
This pretious Passeover feed upon, O Queene,
Let your faire Virtues in my Glasse be seene. 90
(emphasis mine)
It is in this way that the female incantation emanating
from Lanyers refracted discourse of public and dominant
doctrine circumvents the limited language in which women were
permitted to communicate and the limited ways in which they
were permitted to see themselves. Reflected in Lanyers
glasse -- her little Booke -- is the female self-
definition to which she urges herself and the members of her
feminine community.34
Having discovered for her readers the heroic virtues
inherent in women, Lanyer by inference and by report
catalogues their performance of heroic deeds, opening with a
reference to heroic Elizabeth I, in her persona of Cynthia,
warrior goddess of the moon, who already abides in the isle
of the blest -- crownd with everlasting Sovraigntie; /
Where Saints and Angells do attend her Throne, yet who, in
the dedication to the princess Elizabeth, rises again, the
Phoenixof her age, by conflation, in the body of the
reigning queens daughter. Numerous references to the late
Elizabeth, in her variouspersonaethroughout the work,
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praise her as warrior; protector; mentor; and, like Christ, a
nurturer, the hope and comfort of the downtrodden.
Elizabeth, like Eve, is an archetypal paradigm, a recurrent
reflection in Lanyers glass, a goal and a standard for
womans fulfillment.
So is Margaret Russell Clifford. Since the late queens
glory is already known and beyond mortal expression,
announces the poet, she will record the never dying fame of
the Countess of Cumberland, whose piety and zeale have
withstood the continual attacks of Satan.35
She extols
Clifford as Christs faithful bride, the husband from whom
she shalt never be estrangd, and assures her hoped-for
patron that her heroism -- her patience, faith, long
suffring, and . . . love will be rewarded.36
Lanyer, like Sidney, genders Virtue, but unlike Sidneys
beguiling and violent characterization of a Virtue that
ravishes, Lanyers female personification is the true bride
of Christ, who is Virtue, and so is also Christ, the
bridegroom.37
Lanyers collapse of female Virtue into the
historically male Christ in the opening stanzas of To all
vertuous Ladies in generall prefigures the voluptous gender
transposition of Christ in Salve Deus, wherein the son of
God becomes, by conflation, both seductive bridegroom
celebrated in Songs of Solomon5 and bride celebrated in
Songs of Solomon4. This androgynous picture of Christ
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allows Lanyer to position God in the mirror of her poem, not
as Saint Pauls patriarchal agent of misogyny, but as the
feminized reflection of a womans soul.
In the Old Testament, the descriptions of King Solomon
and the rose of Sharon, presented almost in the form of a
dialogue, are distinct. Attributing the effusions of both
lovers to the figure of Christ, Lanyer illustrates the
Scripturally male savior with both male and female
attributes:
Bridegroome that appeares so faire,
So sweet, so lovely in his Spouses sight,
That unto Snowe we may his face compare,
His cheekes like skarlet, and his eyes so bright
As purest Doves that in the rivers are,38
She begins with an androgynous compliment, one used in Songs
to describe both bride and bridegroom: Your eyes behind your
veil are doves,Solomon tells his Lebanese bride in Songs
four,39who, in Songsfive, then describes Solomons eyes to
the daughters of Jerusalem: they are like doves by the
water streams.40
Lanyer does not totally emasculate her
hero, however. As the bridegrooms eyes are washed in milk,
mounted like jewels,41
Lanyer washes Christs eyes with
milke, to give the more delight.42
Like Solomons head,
which is purest gold raven;43
Christs head is likened to
the finest gold.44
Solomons hair is wavy and black as a
raven45
while Lanyers Christ has curled lockes so beauteous
to behold; / Blacke as a Raven in her blackest hew.46
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Solomons cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume.47
Christs cheekes are beds of spices, flowers sweet,48
and,
as Israels earthly kings lips are like lilies dripping
with myrrh,49
so are Christs lips, like Lillies, dropping
downe pure mirrhe.50
Lanyers Christ, nonetheless, does assume the features
of the bride in the description of his mouth. The rose of
Sharons mouth is lovely; her lips are like a scarlet
ribbon.51
Solomon says to her, Your lips drop sweetness as
the honeycomb, my bride; milk and honey are under your
tongue.52
Christs lips, writes Lanyer, are like skarlet
threeds, yet much more sweet / Than is the sweetest hony
dropping dew, /Or hony combes, where all the Bees doe meet.53
This feminine description of Christs mouth, the mouth from
which Christian virtue issues, is significant in that Lanyer
immediately follows it with the pronouncement: his words
are true.54
The words of Christ, for Lanyer, the spiritual
food55
she provides at her feast, come from a feminized organ
of speech.
That spiritual food, Lanyer affirms, is inherently
feminine, for it is Christ who, like a mother, nurtures and
comforts:
Tis He that dries all teares from Orphans eies,
And heares from heav'n the wofull widdows cries.
Tis He that doth behold thy inward cares,
And will regard the sorrowes of thy Soule....56
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It is Christ who, like a mother, guides, protects, and
encourages his children:
Tis He that guides thy feet from Sathans snares,
And in his Wisedome, doth thy waies controule:He through afflictions, still thy Minde prepares,
And all thy glorious Trialls will enroule:
That when darke daies of terror shall appeare,
Thou as the Sunne shalt shine; or much more cleare.57
Lanyers androgynous portrait of Christ, a male embodiment of
feminine Virtue, lover and beloved, so becomes the
allegorical representation of the female hero -- beautiful,
instructive, true, and nurturing.
In the dedication To all vertuous Ladies in generall,
Lanyer instructs womankind to
Annoynt [their] haire with Aarons pretious oyle,
And bring [their] palmes of vict'ry in [their] hands,58
as Moses anointed his brother Aaron, the first priest of
Israel. Lanyer enjoins her readers to "annoynt" themselves
with "Aarons pretious oyle," requesting the community of
women to rise up with "palmes of vict'ry" in their hands, not
as veiled and silent communicants, but as sanctified
priestesses. Inspired and accompanied by the Muses, the
goddesses of the arts and learning, and by the Horae,
goddesses of time and its divisions, they walk with, and as,
Christ up the road to desolation and salvationat Calvary.
In the opening lines of this dedication, Lanyer clearly
identifies Virtue as Eve, enjoining all vertuous Ladies
to
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Let this faire Queene not unattended bee,
When in my Glasse she daines her selfe to see.
Eve, as the paradigm of female beauty in Lanyers glasse
and the hostess of Lanyers feast, is to instruct the company
-- Let Virtue be your guide, for she alone / Can leade you
right that you can never fall.59
However, in the third
stanza, Lanyer just as clearly identifies Virtue as Christ:
those perfit colours purest Virtue wore.60
Again, Lanyer surpasses Sidneys expectations for the
poet of heroic verse by making her epic interactive. Put on
your wedding garments every one, she calls, inviting her
female audience to put on the robes of Christ:61
The roabes
that Christ
wore before
his death.
Let all your roabes be purple scarlet white,
Those perfit colours purest Virtue wore,62
Not only will Lanyers audience be guests, graciously
entertained at her feast, they will be part of the
entertainment, actors in the drama of the Passion and death
of Christ, anointed priest/priestesses of the church, flower-
decked chaste brides to Christs robed bridegroom and
enticing bridegrooms to Christs bride:
Come deckt with Lillies that did so delight
To be preferr'd in Beauty, farre before
Wise Salomon in all his glory dight:
Whose royall roabes did no such pleasure yield,
As did the beauteous Lilly of the field.63
In Lanyers collapsed images, the guests become spiritual
transvestites wearing both male and female attire. Dressed
in the suffering garb of the Passion, the roabes Christ wore
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before his death64
and adorned with lilies and Daphnes
laurel crown, the image of all vertuous ladies fuses with
that of the Savior. As they become one reflection in her
glasse, Lanyer has, literally, transfigur'd all [vertuous
Ladies] with our loving Lord.65
But the union of all vertuous Ladies and Christ,
however sensuous, remains a chaste union because Lanyer has
as well dressed us, her female readers, in Daphnes token of
Constancie, the symbol of our fathers permission to remain
virginal:
Adorne your temples with faire Daphnes crowne
The never changing Laurel, alwaies greene;66
In token of
Constancie
Lanyers defiance against limiting, patriarchial
definitions of women and womanhood does not cause her to deny
all elements of those definitions. She strongly adheres
throughout the Salve Deusto the belief that chastity is a
requirement of virtue. Lanyers conviction about its
necessity, however, derives not from historically male
reasoning that the unbridled carnality of women undermines an
ordered universe; rather, her insistence upon chastity
derives from a rational examination of societal and personal
history. Simply put, women, in Lanyers view, were better
off without men.
Lanyers own illicit liaison and subsequent marriage,
and the marriages of several of her dedicatees, were
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unsatisfying in varying degrees. Most of the unions were
nonsexual by the time Lanyer wrote Salve Deus. Queen Anna
was living at her own palace by 1607. Arbella Stuart was
either in prison or on her way to prison for marrying William
Seymour. Lucy Harington Russell seems to have had little
congress with her husband, even in the earliest days of her
marriage. Mary Sidney was a widow. Margaret Russell
Clifford and her husband were famously estranged. Lanyer
colors celibacy, a reality in her circle, with the hues of
her particular beliefs that evill disposed men67
are
predators who abuse women: men do seeke, she warns,
attempt, plot and devise, / How they may overthrow the
chastest Dame . . . ,68
and that congress with them should be
avoided for that reason. Her depictions of the communities
of women at her Pierian spring and at Cooke-ham, the feminine
Utopia described at the end of her work, sustain Lanyers
conviction that women not only do not need men, but that
without men, women may fore ever / dwell, in perfit unity.69
Female Heroes
Lanyer begins her exposition of female heroism with a
preliminary discussion of female beauty and its consequences
for Helen, Lucrece, Octavia, Cleopatra, Rosamund, and
Matilda. Rather than pride or lack of faith, she illustrates
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the female heros source of frailty as a physical
attactiveness that betrays her, that challenges the male sex
to assault feminine virtue. Evile men, Paris, Sextus
Tarquinius, Marc Antonly, Henry II, and King John, rapacious
in pursuit of corporeal charm, worked the downfall of these
beautiful women. Even Holy Matilda, who chose to die with
Honour, not to live in Shame, in the end, is ravished by her
own physical beauty.70
It is, maintains Lanyer, spiritual beauty imbued by
Gods grace that defines and protects the female hero rather
than physical beauty. Margaret Russell Clifford, for
example, her marital position usurped by her husbands
mistress and her estate embroiled in heriditary lawsuits, is
beautified and beatified, and so raised above the world
tainted with Adam and Judas sins, heroic and radiant in the
eyes of God and those who follow him, by virtue of the grace
merited by her service to God. Clifford, gone from the
Court to the Countrie, has retired to the paradise of
Cooke-ham, Leaving the world, before the world71
leaves her.
She,
. . . the wonder of our wanton age
Leav'st all delights to serve a heav'nly King:Who is more wise? or who can be more sage,
Than she that doth Affection subject bring;
Not forcing for the world, or Satans rage,
But shrowding under the Almighties wing;
Spending her yeares, moneths, daies, minutes, howres,
In doing service to the heav'nly powres.72
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Like heroic Matilda who did scorne the base subjection,
resisting worldly inducements and so the advances of
lustfull King John,73
Clifford resists all earthly
inducements, scorning the base subjection of a corrupt world,
and so is recipient of Gods grace:
To the
Ladie of
Cumberland
the Intro-
duction to
the passion
of Christ
This Grace great Lady, doth possesse thy Soule,
And makes thee pleasing in thy Makers sight;
This Grace doth all imperfect Thoughts controule,
Directing thee to serve thy God aright;
Still reckoning him, the Husband of thy Soule,
Which is most pretious in his glorious sight:
Because the Worlds delights shee doth denie
For him, who for her sake vouchsaf'd to die.74
Withdrawn from court to Cooke-ham, Clifford is the rightful
inheritor of the kingdom of God; she is Dowager of all; /
Nay more, Co-heire of that eternall blisse / That Angels
lost, and We by Adams fall.75
Pilates wife, who implores her spouse to spare Christ,
cajoling him, telling him that sparing this innocent will
prevent a moral triumph for women, begins Lanyers catalogue of
virtuous, heroic women.
Let not us Women glory in Mens fall
Who had power given to over-rule us
all.76
The Governors worthy wife, to no avail, petitions her
husband to reconsider:
Let barb'rous crueltie farre depart from thee,
And in true Justice take afflictions part;
Open thine eies, that thou the truth mai'st see,
Doe not the thing that goes against thy heart,
Condemne not him that must thy Saviour be . . . .77
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Her unheeded lament is followed by Eves Apology, Lanyers
poetic argument in defense of the first woman and all of
womankind.78
It is the daughters of Jerusalem, however,
who,
By their pitious cries
Did move their Lover and their King
To take compassion, turne about, and speake
To them whose hearts were ready now to breake,79
whom Lanyer in empathetic conflation ennobles to Sidneys
magnificence in particular status. Accompanying Christ to
Golgatha, their
. . . Faith and love unto such grace did clime,
To have reflection from his Heavnly Light.80
They, in their emotional identification, bear his
suffering and cross. His mother, Her griefes extreame,
although but new begun,81
swooning and weeping, humbles
herself, on her knees in the open street, washing her sons
blood from the stones, so that it might not be trampled by
passersby, and it is she, Christs mother, who has been
called by Gods emissary blessed among women. And it is
she, the Virgin Mary, whose Virtues worth the angel has
proclaimed.82
Again, conflating the trials of Margaret Russell
Clifford with those of the mother of Christ, Lanyer
repositions her mentor, placing her in the procession to
Calvary at the same time as a bride of Christ, to share in
both Christs joyes and griefe,83
as she, through the agency
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of Lanyers booke, prepares to participate in her Saviours
noblest of acts, the giving of his life to save humanity.
The Countess of Cumberland, in fact,has undergone a
total transfiguration. Faithful and constant, her beauty
shines brighter than the Sunne. Her honor is more than
ever Monarke gaind. Her wealth is greater than the wealth
of he that Kingdomes wonne.84
By reason of herfaire
virtues -- faith . . . prayers, his special grace --
Margaret Russell Clifford is recipient of a Spiritual
powre, which enables her to heale the souls of those that
doe transgress. She has been given the power to restore
sight to the blind, to make the deaf hear, and to make the
lame walk. She can cast out devils. She can cure madness.85
The transfigur'd countess has, in effect, become Christ.
Lanyer, conflating the balms brought by The Maries,
Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary, who have come to the tomb
to anoint the corpse with the pretious oyntments [Christ]
desires,
those brought unto him by his faithful Wife
The holy Church; who in those rich attires,
of Patience, Love, Long Suffering, Voide of strife,
Humbly presents those oyntments he requires:
the oyles of Mercie, Charitie, and Faith,86
collapses the Mariesinto the holy Church. Again,
ministering and ministered to, the female heroes of Lanyers
epic are transfigur'd; bride and bridegroom, savior and
saved at once, they tend the wounded and radiant body of
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Christ. Like a mirror in a Mannerist painting, Lanyers
images refract and reflect: the Maries-- in the collapsed
figures of bride/bridegroom, savior/saved, Christ/Margaret
Russell Clifford /church, Margaret Russell Clifford/womankind
-- both follow and become the paradigm of Lanyers female
hero.
In another address to Clifford in the title poem, Salve
Deus, Lanyer identifies the countess with heroic women of
Scripture, whose worth, though writ in lines of blood and
fire / is not to be compared unto [Cliffords].87
Because of
her ongoing battle with that many headed monster Sinne,88
Clifford is more heroic than the Scythian women, to whom
Lanyer credits the fall of Persia in 331.89
She is more brave
and wise than the prophetess Deborah, who judged Israel and
rode with Barak to victorious battle with Sisera.90
She is
more powerful than beautiful and pious Judith, who chastised
the Judaens for testing God and who beheaded Holofernes with
his own sword.91
These worthy women of Scripture, says
Lanyer, each performed only one heroic deed. They do not
compare to the deeds of the Countess of Cumberland, who hast
performed many in [her] time, not the least of which is the
Conquest of all Conquests over Hell.92
Even Hester, who wore
sack cloth and ashes, and who fasted three days, needs give
place to Clifford, who hath continud dayes, weekes,
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months, yeares / In Gods true service.93
Clifford, fasting
from sinne, wears the sack-cloth of worldly troubles
both night and day and the ashes of mourning fantasies,
the torturing mental images of her cares.94
And even though
the biblical Susannas opposition to old doting Lust
deserves to be immortalized in holy Writ, her glory pales
beside the glory of the countesss chaste breast, guarded
with strength of mind, which resists all lust whether it be
old or yong.95
Even the Queen of Sheba, who came from afar
to witness the wisdom of King Solomon, does not measure up to
Clifford, who has come to see the Christ Lanyer pictures in
her little booke96
because as wise as this rare Phoenix of
that worne-out age, was, this great majesticke Queene comes
short of the Countess, who, rather than an earthly prince,
has chosen to venerate A King, a God, the Monarke of
heavn, earth, and sea.97
Carefully comparing Margaret Russell Clifford to
acknowledged good women of the Bible serves a double purpose.
It places half a dozen noble role models in the mirror of
Lanyers book, providing her readers with heroic reflections.
At the same time it centers the reflection of the Countess of
Cumberland within the reflection of a feminized Christ. So
placed in Lanyers glass, the reflections of Christ and
Clifford merge into an image of valour with which women can
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identify, godly, chaste, brave, and victorious, surrounded by
a host of heroic women from the past.
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Notes
1
Statute of the Realm. IV, I, 222. Williams, C.H., ed. English
Historical Documents V, 1485-1558. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1967) 44.2
Constance Jordan, Representing Political Androgeny: More on the
Siena Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in The Renaissance Englishwoman in
Print, Hazlekorn and Travitsky, eds. (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1990) and Williams, EHD V44. See also Acta Regia:
or An Account of the Treatise, Letters, and Instruments Between the
Monarchs of England and Foreign Powers vol. 3(London, 1728), 407-8.3
1 Corinthians 14
34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto
them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
35 And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is
a shame for women to speak in the church.
1 Timothy 2
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over man, but to be in
silence.
13 For Adam was first formed; then Eve.
14 And Adamwas not deceived, but the woman being deceived.
Genesis 3
Unto the woman He said, thy husband...shall rule over thee.
4
Ephesians 5:23.5
Jordan 158.6
Axton, Marie. The Queens Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan
Succession. (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 12.
7Levin, Carole. The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and
the Politics of Sex and Power. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 123. Levin here refers to the adjudication
of the Duchy of Lancaster Case.8
Levin 144.9
Thomas Becon 1554.10
John Knox. First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment
of women, 1558in The English Experience: Its Record in Early Printed
Books Published in Facsimile,Number 471. (New York: Da Capo Press
Inc, 1972) 11.11
Aristotle, E. H. Warmington, ed. The Politics, (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1972), 1.5.2, 1259b, pp. 58-59. In thesixteenth century the most frequently published Latin translation of the
Politicswas Aretino's; F. Edward Cranz counts forty-two separate
editions.12
Politics.1.5.8, 1260a, pp. 62-63.13
Politicsff. 22v, 23.14
Stubbs, Philip. Anatomie of Abuses(1583), ed. William B.D.D.
Turnbull (London: W. Pickering, 1863), 68.
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60
44
Salve Deus 1311.45
SS5.1146
Salve Deus 1312-3.
47SS5.13.48
Salve Deus 1318.49
SS5.13.50
Salve Deus 1319.51
SS4.3.52
SS4.11.53
Salve Deus 1313-6.54
Salve Deus 1317.55
I am indebted to Lynette McGrath, who speaks of Lanyer as provider of
spiritual poetic food in Metaphoric Subversions 105.56
Salve Deus 47-50.57
Salve Deus 51-6.58
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 36-759
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 10-1.60
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 15-6.61
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 8.62
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 15-7.63
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 21.64
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 15 margin.65
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 51.66
To all vertuous Ladies in generall 23.67
To the Vertuous Reader 19.68
Salve Deus 206-7.69
The Authors Dreame 89.70
Salve Deus 185-248.71
Salve Deus 161-2.72
Salve Deus 169-76.73
Salve Deus 233-43.74
Salve Deus 249-264.75
Salve Deus 249-264.76
Salve Deus 759-60.77
Salve Deus 753-7.78
Cf. 73.79
Salve Deus 981-4.
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80
Salve Deus 989-90.81
Salve Deus 101182
Salve Deus 1046-7
83Salve Deus 154.84
Salve Deus 1401-1405.85
Salve Deus 1369-84.86
Salve Deus 1287-1296.87
Salve Deus 1473-4.88
Salve Deus 1490.89
Woods note 114.90
Judges 5 (English-NIV).91
The Book of Judith(National Council of Churches of Christ in
America).92
Salve Deus 1498, 1501-2.93
Salve Deus 1514-6.94
Salve Deus 1523-7.95
Salve Deus 1543-1550.96
Salve Deus 1569-76, 1673-1700.97
Salve Deus 1706-11.